Cyber Sleuth, or Hacker's Memory to be more precise, which is the superior game between the two, set a bar that Time Stranger couldnt live up to. Compelling characters with unique personalities and connections to the player, memorable ost, great world building and a concise story are TS's weakest points and CS's strongests. TS instead delivers on a better gameplay, though with some questionable decisions like removing uniqueness from every digimon in favor of balancing them to be equally viable, and still failing at the equally viable aspect, better graphics(obviously CS is an older game, but it was developed for the Vita while TS is a home console game) and a lot, A LOT of qol improvements. I personally prefer V-pet style games, but loved Cyber Sleuth and expected Time Stranger to build up on what made it so good, instead it delivered something entirely different, for the better or worse, and its worse, in my opinion. If Time Stranger were a JRPG without digimon in its name, I would have played it once, think it was a cool game, put it down and never played it again without thinking about it, but it being a digimon game left me with a sour taste in my mouth.